Barrio Ay-eh-ro-nautico

Another amazing trip to the clinic in Palacios. This week I joined Char in helping to check in patients and fill prescriptions from the pharmacy closet, getting a deeper view into the clinic's day-to-day operations and standard operating procedures. I gained an even deeper respect for the work performed each day by the nurses (Maria, Guinda, and Gretchen) and the doctors. Amongst the 50-70 patients who arrive via CMHP's micro buses each day, there is quite a wide range of medical problems from tropical skin fungi to mucho diabetes to a woman this week who had over 100 larva living in her ear drum!

Char (here practicing taking blood pressure on Dr. Susan Hou) has been the queen of taking blood sugar readings for all of the patients, doing her friends at Neighborhood Diabetes proud. I was put to work trying to fix the EKG machine amongst other medical equipment. I had more failure than success but enjoyed the challenge. We're enjoying filling any niche we can in completing day-to-day work whenever we aren't working on our longer term projects for Centro Medico. We can also always count on great sports with the youth from Palacios each night. Due to the average Bolivian stature, I had never felt so tall when we played full court basketball. We've promised to teach them ultimate frisbee soon as Dr. Susan brought down a good disc--frisbees are non-existent in Santa Cruz sporting goods stores. I've been all over town looking.

This week was also special as it was the cumpleaños (birthday) of Carlita on Friday. Que divertido! She assured me that it was definitely her best birthday since we've been married. After a pancake breakfast and a good day at the clinic, we returned to Santa Cruz for a night out to dinner and then home for cake. Based on a recommendation from a former volunteer, we headed to Van Gogh, a new restaurant in the trendy Equipetrol district complete with Vincent's art, good Chilean wine, and really tasty food. No guinea pig this night Dad, but we some great salmon ravioli and tropical fish with a passion fruit sauce. In honor of the birthday girl, some champagne made its way out with the chocolate lava molten cake for dessert. The group was in high spirits in celebrating the birthday and the last night in Bolivia for volunteer Liz Wolf, a medical student at Northwestern. You could say we were all a little borracha by the end of the envening. Our cab driver got to listen to Char practice her intonation of "Barrio Aeronautico, conoce?" the whole way back.

Then home for more cake (Char's classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting) that Zoila and Vero had made Friday while we were at the clinic. Those girls are fantastic and such a great addition to life in Santa Cruz. A tradition in Bolivia is to push the cumpleaña's face into the birthday cake after she's blown out the candles. As you can guess, Char was up to the challenge.

Feliz 25th Cumpleaños a mi bonita Carlita!